It's cold enough to freeze my tits off, but I do like it up here. The sky is like a stage, curtains of night pulled back to expose the sparkling vastness of space.
The moon twists its face around on its space-neck to look at me, and I like looking back at it.
"Moon," I say. "What do you think I should do to my hair?"
One time, I used the moon as a giant antenna to receive trans-dimensional messages from Brian-Eno-in-the-past, so we're kind of friends. The moon is helpful and friendly; I played 'Here Come the Warm Jets' for the moon and it liked the album very much. It was pretty good, that.
Genius, really.
I'll bet my hair looks great right now, all gently swaying in the night breezes. I should bring a mirror up sometime. Oh, that might be good! Like John Lennon when he stayed in bed, but on a roof! and with style!
Better hold the Yoko, though.
Being on the roof makes me feel like my bones are thinning out in preparation to take flight. I bet if I tried, I could grow a beak and jump in to the sky and wear the stars like beads of water rolling off my sleek bird body. I did always look pretty fuckin' excellent in feathers.
Someone down in the street below is being loud, sounds like they're having a right good time. "HEY LADY!" the someone calls out saucily, "What you doin' up there?"
"Don't worry about it!" I call back. "I'm not even really here!"
I can hear them stumbling away into the night, leaving only a laugh behind to echo back at me.
The moon smiles down at me- he knows this kind of thing happens all the time.
There's a creak and a thud, and suddenly I am looking in to a pair of beady eyes.
"Vince, What're you doing up here? Are you shouting?"
Howard's face peeps out of the sky-light, and precariously, he climbs up to sit beside me.
"It's so cold!" He says, looking at me. "Don't you want to come down?" His words are white steam syllables, breathy plumes pulled away by the wind. "There's cocoa," He tempts.
"Sure, Howard, I'll come down soon," I tell him, adjusting the tastefully beaded fringe on my lycra Space-Demon suit. The little silvery beads are icy and tinkling. He raises a skeptical eyebrow in inquiry.
"Why are you up here?" He asks. "Naboo's made spaghetti burgers."
"I"m communing with the universe," I explain.
"Ah, and a good place to do it," He agrees, wrapping his arms around his knees.
"Been a long time since you and I were up here together, eh?" He asks, and I smile, but I'm not sure where he means to go with that comment exactly.
Maybe nowhere. It has been a while.
Now Howard is musing, I can see it coming on. He gets this kind of strained, inwardly harassed look that I think is supposed to pass for wisdom, and everything he says gets deeply boring.
He has on a muffin colored top and socks with sandals. Jesus, that is just awful, innit? His hair looks nice, though. A bit wild. The just-rolled-out-of-bed look works on him. I'm an excellent hairdresser.
I tune back in and catch something about responsibility and the laying aside of dreams. Such a martyr, he is. "Another year older, another year nearer to death. I'm almost 33 years old, Vince. Alone, a man in his prime." He pauses, looking at me emphatically.
I give him a look. "I know how old you are, Howard. We're the same age," I remind him.
Now its Howard's turn to give me a look. "Wait just a minute, sir. Hold on- Communing with the universe? Admitting your real age? Are you feeling all right?"
It's impossible for me not to smile at his disbelief. "I feel fine!" I tell him, and I'm damn sure not lying. "I'm a mystical kind of person," I tell him. "I can commune with the universe, it's not just for stuffed, jazzy intellectual types. I was just asking the moon what it thinks I should do with my hair. And if that's not mystical.."
Sometimes I think the moon might be the only one who really gets me.
Howard rolls his eyes. "And did the moon tell you its looking a bit like Cher lately?"
"She's really good, Howard, you shouldn't joke about her, well into her 70s and still a right minx." Howard thinks about this for a minute and shrugs. "You could do a lot worse," He admits.
"Oh, and what do you know about it?" I ask, teasing him.
"More than you might think," He alludes.
"Oh, come off it. Everyone knows that I'm the only girlfriend you ever had, and you chucked me, remember?" I tell him. I don't mention Eleanor for Howard's sake.
Howard looks dis-believing for a second. "I didn't chuck you! You were the one that rejected me!"
"Oh, not this again," I sigh, covering my face with my hands.
Howard's face grows stormy. "Oh yes, this again!"
"Have you been waiting to bring this up?" I ask him.
"I should ask you the same thing! Or is that the name of the game with you, toying with a man's emotions? Stringing them along until you have them where you want them?"
"Jesus, Howard! That's silly, I was the one that kissed you! How can I be rejecting you if I'm the one doing the kissing? That isn't how it works!"
Howard began to look a bit crazed in the moonlight. "Exactly! You just swept right in! You loved me and left me, that's what you did," He tells me. "Great confuser, indeed!"
"Left you!? I didn't leave you, I never went anywhere! I'm right fuckin' here!" I want to laugh, but I hold it back. "You said you were over me!"
His thoughts are so insane that it turns my arms in to radical, tie-dyed exclamations points, and then changes them back again. I find them trying to hold him off with 'slow down, get back' kind of gestures.
"And then when I tried to confess my love, you shut me down!" He continued, "Just brushed my feelings off." Howard said. "And it wasn't the first time, either!"
"One kiss doesn't mean anything! Haven't you ever heard anyone say 'A kiss is just a kiss'? I mean, really! I can't believe you're saying this to me!"
"One kiss might not mean anything, but what about a whole life?" He asks me.
"That's bullshit, you won't even let me touch you!"
His tone is makin' me nervous, but I still can't tell if we are joking or if he's talking about something more philosophical. The lines are always kind of blurry between us. Normally I don't mind, but I don't deny that it does take a bit of work on my part, making sure I still know where the lines between us actually are.
"And anyway, if it hadn't been for the head shaman gone ape-shit I never would have in the first place!"
Howard's arms cross over his chest in a defensive manner. He looks wounded.
I sit forward, catching his eyes. "Now let's get this sorted. You were the one that rejected me," I told him. "If you are so broken up, why am I the one that got chucked? That doesn't seem to add up, does it? You didn't have to chuck me. You could have kept me, you know. You're getting thick in your old age."
"If you wanted me to keep you, why would you.." Howard was searching for the right words, I could see out-loud that his brain was failing to communicate. Struggling to regain some semblance of rational speech, his hands clench frustratingly.
"Don't you think there's a reason for all of this?" Howard burst out, and flailed passionately. I grabbed at his wrist to steady him. "Careful! You'll fall again, and there's no bouncy castle this time," I warned.
He took my hand, putting it to his heart dramatically. "Don't you think it all has some greater meaning? You? And me? Together? There has to be a reason that you go out every night with beautiful, interesting people, and still come home to me!"
"What was it again, Howard?" I ask him. I'm trying my best not to smile, hiding my mouth behind my hand, but it's creeping out and up, kidnapping my face until I'm grinning. "The 'molten sexual tension,' was it?"
He just looks at me.
At this point, I can see that I have stumbled on to dangerous ground with him! He really is upset! Right away I felt badly about all of it.
Though, in a curious way, this whole thing does endear him to me. Poor desperate Howard, willing to give himself up to anyone just for the sake of being had.
Sad, that is. Him complaining about how he thinks we should be together. Especially because here I am, going along, thinking we already were together, in our own way! I don't know what to say.
"I don't really know what to say," I tell him.
There are plenty of things I might have said. My braincell is rampaging, stamping around, practically screaming I never should have kissed you!
I should have kissed you before!
If I hadn't of kissed you, I'd be deader than dead!
If you had confidence enough to go after me properly, maybe you'd be worth a real go.
I think green is a great color on you, but not that olive drab shit you wear.
And you could do with some highlights, possibly. Or maybe just one really dandy one in the front.
But I didn't say anything.
Howard's face falls.
"Listen," I told him, gently. "This is how I see it," He blinks, waiting to be brought around. The corner of his mouth twitches, but only the teeniest little bit. But that's a good sign, I can definitely smooth this one over.
"It's always been you and me, yeah? It's you and me this very minute! Howard, all this talking about me leaving you and you chucking me, it's depressing. I don't like it. You have me, and I have you, and really, the only difference between how it is now and how you want it to be is in your mind; the way you're looking at things is what has to change."
Silently, the moon agrees with me. "You see?" I gesture. "The moon agrees with me."
Howard considers this, but I can see it isn't going to be enough.
"What about sex?" He asks me quietly, bitterly. His voice is dark.
"What about it?" I ask, gaping at him.
"Don't be clever," Howard tells me.
"Well, If you can find someone who will sleep with you, I think you right well should!"
"I'm going down," he says, heaving himself up and half-pitching down the roof. I reach after him, poised for disaster to strike. Dangerously, he scrambles back down through the skylight.
"You coming?" he asks begrudgingly.
"I bet you'd like it if I did, yeah?" I ask, smirking. I do know better but I just can't help it!
